Inside Microsoft’s new ‘Envisioning Lab’

So much of Microsoft’s income is from corporate partnerships – about 80 percent of Office revenue, for instance, comes from enterprise customers – it’s always interesting to see where and how Microsoft gets those folks hooked on its technology. That’s where Microsoft’s new “Envisioning Lab” comes in.

Inside the Executive Briefing Center (Building 33) in Redmond are three rooms where Microsoft has installed the latest and greatest of its technology, an impressive display to convey the software superpower’s vision of the future. On Tuesday, Microsoft invited a half-dozen members of the local media inside the Envisioning Lab to see where Microsoft thinks productivity is heading.

The first room is anchored by what Microsoft says is the world’s largest touch surface. It’s a long wall of synchronized screens that, like the Microsoft Surface, respond to touch. And it’s where Stephen Elop, president of the Microsoft Business Division, showed us the “Vision of the Future of Productivity” video I wrote about Tuesday.

Ted S. Warren/AP Photo

In the first room of the Envisioning Lab, Stephen Elop presents Microsoft’s high-level strategy for productivity services Tuesday in Redmond.

The second room features a number of poll-mounted demo stations, including screens for video presentations and for showing off live software. Ian Sands, Microsoft’s senior director of envisioning (a heckuva title), showed reporters Tuesday how several ideas from the video are incorporated into Office 2010 – a stretch, for sure.

But it is interesting to see how Microsoft’s current products fit into that long-term corporate strategy. While the user interfaces featured in the “Vision of the Future of Productivity” video are fancy and seamless and sleek, much of the core technology already is inside of current products, both from Microsoft and others.

Ted S. Warren/AP Photo

In the second room, Ian Sands gives media a demonstration of OneNote in Windows Phone 7.

Finally, the last space is a spectacle of a conference room, with hip design and one wall covered entirely with live ivy. The couches are comfortable. The catering would likely whet the corporate-partnership appetite (full disclosure: I had a Diet Pepsi). And one wall is reserved for a digital projector. Above all three rooms is an exposed jungle of cords and conduits.